§ LEGENDS · 2 MIN READ
She Learned French to Get a Pilot's License
No American flight school would teach a Black woman in 1920, so Bessie Coleman learned French, sailed to Paris, and came back with a license none of them could refuse to recognise.
By Culture
THE SHORT VERSION
Bessie Coleman became the first Black woman and the first Native American woman to earn a pilot's license, receiving an international license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale in France in 1921 after American flight schools refused to train her because of her race and sex. She learned French in order to study abroad.
Bessie Coleman was born in Texas in 1892, one of thirteen children, and picked cotton as a child. She saved money working as a manicurist in Chicago while listening to pilots home from the First World War describe flying.
She decided she wanted to do it. Every flight school in the United States said no, on the grounds that she was Black and that she was a woman.
Most people stop at that sentence, because there is nowhere obvious to go from it. Coleman went sideways.
She was told French schools would train her. So she learned French, in night classes, while working. Then she sailed to France and enrolled.
In June 1921 she earned an international pilot's license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, becoming the first Black woman and the first Native American woman to hold one. She earned it before many famous American aviators held theirs, and she earned it in a language she had taught herself in order to get it.
“They would not open the door, so she learned another language and walked in through a different building.”
She came home and became a barnstormer, flying exhibition shows across the country in an era when stunt flying drew enormous crowds. She was billed as Queen Bess. She was, by every account, exceptional in the air.
And she used the leverage. Coleman refused to perform at events that would not admit Black spectators, and refused to appear where the crowd was segregated by entrance. Turning down paid work was not a small thing for somebody funding her own aircraft, and she did it repeatedly.
Her stated ambition was to open a flight school for Black aviators. She was raising money toward it, show by show, when she died in a crash in 1926 at thirty four.
Because the school happened. Not hers, but because of her. Black flying clubs were founded in her name, Black aviators cited her as the reason they believed it was possible, and the line from Coleman runs forward to the Tuskegee Airmen and beyond.
That is the pattern this section keeps finding. Garrett Morgan looked at a broken intersection and decided it was unfinished. Katherine Johnson asked whether there was actually a law against her attending the briefing. The obstacle was real in every case, and in every case somebody checked whether it was the only route.
The practical version, for anybody being told no right now: ask what exactly is being refused, by whom, and whether that person controls the only path. Frequently they control one path and are describing it as the world.
- Who was the first Black woman to earn a pilot's license?
- Bessie Coleman, who received an international pilot's license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale in France in June 1921. She was also the first Native American woman to hold one.
- Why did Bessie Coleman train in France?
- Because American flight schools refused to teach her on the grounds of her race and sex. Told that French schools would accept her, she learned French in night classes while working, then sailed to France and enrolled.
- What did Bessie Coleman do after getting her license?
- She became a barnstormer, performing exhibition flights across the United States, and she refused to appear at events that excluded Black spectators or segregated the crowd. She was raising money to open a flight school for Black aviators when she died in 1926.
